In common with all other African potentates, Sahela Selassie never
engages in war, induced either by public principles, or by national
glory, and, least of all, by a love of his people. Whilst the fear of
rebellion and disturbance at home deters him from attempting on a grand
scale to resume the lost possessions of his ancestors, to wield the
sceptre as they did, three hundred miles south of his present limits,
and to re-unite the scattered remnants of Christian population who once
acknowledged their supremacy--revenge, the almost invariable success
attending his arms, and the insatiable love of plunder inherent in the
breast of every savage, impel him thrice a year to gather his
undisciplined militia, in order to undertake sudden and sweeping
inroads, either for the purpose of chastising insurrection among the
subjugated usurpers of portions of the ancient empire of -Ethiopia, or
of asserting his unstable authority over some neighbouring tribe that
may heretofore have succeeded in maintaining its independence.
The wilds of Abyssinia are not easily explored by the solitary
traveller, and I therefore gladly embraced the opportunity of acquiring
important information relative to the mode of Amhara warfare, as well as
of visiting regions almost unknown. Superstition, policy, and fear,
alike influenced the wily monarch in his expressed desire to be
accompanied by his British guests. The presence of the stranger being
considered to shed a blessing over the army, is invariably enforced by
royal mandate, which extends indiscriminately to all residing within the
kingdom; and whilst His Majesty, distrusting the sojourn in his
undefended capital of so large a body of foreigners, sought the
augmentation of his consequence in the eyes both of enemies and
subjects, I indulged in the hope that the cause of humanity might be
promoted by the check which the presence of the European invariably
enforces upon the excited savage, during the revolting and sanguinary
scenes of exulting victory. From the fact of the army having provided
rations for no more than twenty days, it was clearly impossible that
operations should be directed against Lake Zooai, in Gurague, distant
from Angollala one hundred and fifty miles; and this circumstance fully
explained the before incomprehensible indifference displayed by the
Negoos to every preparation which might facilitate the advance of his
troops. Keeping the secret of his real intentions fast locked in his
own despotic breast, it is the invariable practice of His Majesty to
publish a manifesto of the approaching campaign, calculated to mislead
his enemies; and he not unfrequently carries the deception so far, as to
make three or four marches in a direction quite opposite to that in
which he had inwardly resolved to strike the blow. None have the
slightest idea in what quarter the thunderbolt is to fall, and as the
fatal season draws nigh when the state revenues are to be levied,
anxiously must throb the conscious bosom of that vassal who has fallen
under the royal displeasure.
Beyond the removal of muskets and matchlocks from their pegs, to be
oiled and exposed to the sun before the porch of the great audience
hall, few signs of preparation were observable for the approaching
foray. Angollala was indeed somewhat more populous than usual, and
beggars more numerous and importunate. Wild Galla chieftains, too, were
in attendance with propitiatory offerings and outstanding arrears of
tribute, and the interior of the palace presented a scene of increased
bustle and confusion. His Majesty was to be seen absorbed in the
inspection of venerable pots, pans, and pipkins, which would have been
esteemed invaluable contributions to the British Museum. Tailors,
silks, tinsel, and satin, were in equal requisition towards the
decoration of the imperial person, and the fat Master of the Horse,
assisted by the _elite_ of the household warriors, sat cobbling old
leather with laudable assiduity for the edification of a whole host of
eunuchs. But in the arsenal there was no busy note of preparation such
as is wont to precede European warfare; no crowding of light ordnance
and heavy batteries; no commissariat, waggon-train, or sick carriage;
and no interminable files of camels loading for the approaching march.
"The steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,"
had no place on the parade: the complicated and expensive equipment, and
the munitions of the siege, were alike wanting; and although a few
detachments were bivouacked on the adjacent meadow, and the black pall
of a governor was here and there to be seen, it was still difficult even
to conjecture whence the army of the despot was to spring.
Abject slaves to superstition, the Amhara never fail to consult the
omens before setting out on a military expedition. Priests and monks
are referred to by the monarch, and the accidental fall of the targe
from a saddle bow, the alighting of a hooded crow in the path of a
warrior, or the appearance of a white falcon with the tail towards him,
are believed to augur unfavourably to success; whilst the flight of a
pair of ravens in any direction, or the descent of a falcon with her
head towards the army, are on the other hand esteemed certain
prognostications of victory. For a full week prior to the opening of
the projected campaign, the nocturnal howling of dogs had boded an
inauspicious termination. One cur bayed at the moon as she rose; a
second and a third took up the vile note, and a doleful concert of
hundreds gave birth in the mind of the Christian soldier to presage of
coming evil. Queen Besabesh was to await the issue of the foray at
Angollala, and the command of the town meanwhile devolved upon the
eunuch Wolda Mariam, with a garrison sufficient to deter visits on the
part of the Galla, who have more than once attempted to burn the palace
during such incursions into their territories. On the morning of the
day appointed, a flourish of trumpets from the royal band proclaimed the
exit of the Negoos from the palace, and shortly after sunrise the
imperial crimson velvet umbrellas issued through the outer gateway at
the head of a numerous procession. Crossing the meadow, His Majesty,
resplendent in cloth of gold, took the road to the south by the wicket
in the Galla wall, on which a strong advance picquet had already taken
post. Every house in Angollala swelled the passing cavalcade; and each
valley and hamlet in the environs marshalling its quota of mounted
warriors, the nucleus of the incipient army, before advancing many
miles, had become thick and dense. Abogaz Maretch with the Abitchu
legion streamed from the stockaded hill of Wona-badera, and a band of
veterans occupying the summit of an adjacent rock meanwhile chanted the
prowess of the royal warrior, who halted a few seconds in acknowledgment
of their flattering eulogium.
Little order or arrangement is attempted during the first march, which
invariably terminates at or near Yeolo, in order to afford time to
stragglers to rejoin, or to admit of the return of those who may from
any circumstance prove incapable of toil, or unprepared for the
campaign. Immediately in advance of the army, screened beneath a canopy
of scarlet broad-cloth, were borne on an ambling mule the Holy
Scriptures and the ark of the cathedral of Saint Michael, the miraculous
virtues of which sacred emblem, throwing into shade those of the
Palladium of Troy, are believed to ensure victory to the Christian host.
Supported by the crimson _debaboch_, the king rode next upon a
richly-caparisoned mule, a small space around the royal person being
kept clear by the corps of shield-bearers, who were flanked on the right
by fusiliers and matchlock-men of the body-guard, and on the left by the
band of kettle-drums on donkeys, with trumpets and wind instruments.
Numerous governors, judges, monks, priests, and singers followed, and
behind them rode a curious accompaniment to a martial expedition. Forty
dames and damsels, professing the culinary art, with elaborately-crisped
bee-hive wigs, greased faces bedaubed with ochre, and arched blue
eyebrows, were muffled in crimson-striped robes of cotton--a demure
assemblage rigorously guarded on all sides by austere eunuchs armed with
long white wands. Beyond, far as the eye could penetrate the canopy of
dust which hung over the horizon, every hill and valley swarmed with
masses of equestrians and pedestrians, warriors, henchmen, and
camp-followers, sumpter horses, asses, and mules, laden with tents,
horns of old mead, and bags of provisions--throngs of women carrying
pitchers of beer and hydromel at their backs, and lads with glittering
sheaves of spears upon their shoulders, leading gaily-caparisoned
war-steeds--all mixed and crowded together in the most picturesque
disorder and confusion.
After crossing the Chacha, the country to the south-west is no longer
safe for a single traveller; and owing to the determined hostility of
the various wild Galla tribes by which it is inhabited, small Amhara
detachments would even find difficulty in passing. The road lay through
an amphitheatre of low broken hills, rising amid rich meadows and
fields, and clothed in parts with juniper or camel thorn, through dark
groves of which peeped numerous tiny Galla hamlets--the distant
landscape being bounded by the great blue mountain ranges of Bulga,
Garra Gorphoo, and Sallala Moogher, collectively forming a crescent, but
towering independently in isolated grandeur.
At the termination of the fifteenth mile, the ladies and their eunuchs,
having hovered about for some time in uncertainty, finally settled down,
like a flight of flamingoes, in a pretty secluded valley, through which
winds the deep muddy Baroga. Their halt, and the selection made of a
site for the royal kitchen, proclaimed the encamping ground under a
naturally scarped table-hill styled Gimbee Bayello, which imparts its
name to the spot. A fierce scramble for places ensued, and the several
detachments bivouacking _sub divo_ around the dingy palls of their
respective leaders, which arose on the next minute, soon spread far and
wide over every dell and meadow.
The centre of the straggling camp, which could not have measured less
than five miles in diameter, was occupied by the royal suite of tents,
consisting of a gay parti-coloured marquee of Turkish manufacture,
surrounded by twelve ample awnings of black serge, over which floated
five crimson pennons, surmounted by silver globes. Until these had been
erected, and duly enclosed by an outer screen of cotton cloths, the
Negoos, according to his wont, ascending an adjacent eminence, with all
the principal chieftains, and an escort of several hundred picked
warriors, remained seated on a cushioned _alga_; and under the crimson
canopy of the state umbrellas, watched the progress making towards his
accommodation.
Horses abound in the kingdom of Shoa, as well as throughout the adjacent
champaign country of the Galla; but save during the foray, they are
rarely mounted by the indolent Amhara, the sure-footed mule being better
adapted to his taste, and to the rugged hills that compose the greater
portion of the frontier. The note of war, however, had so materially
increased the value of the steed, that even the few horses we required
had been obtained with difficulty. Every old, unsound, and vicious
Rozinante in the realm was speciously presented, and in turn rejected,
when Abogaz Maretch at length advertised his stud. Two hundred pieces
of salt were the price fixed upon the first purchase; and as this _small
change_ was not procurable within thirty miles, and moreover would have
formed the load of two jackasses, ten Austrian convention dollars were
forwarded in lieu thereof, each valued at ten amoles, and exhibiting all
the requisite jewels in the star and coronet of Maria Theresa. "I have
kept your silver," was the chief's reply, "because you have sent it; but
in future when I sell you a horse, I shall expect you to pay me in
salt."
In a country where even the hire of a porter is dependent upon the
arbitrary caprice of the despotic sovereign, and where the inferiors of
the court, entertaining one and all the most thorough contempt for
truth, are lavish of promises without the smallest intention of
performing them, no little difficulty had also been experienced in
obtaining transport at so busy a season. Our preparations were
therefore of an extremely limited nature, no member carrying aught save
the scantiest bedding, whilst the general commissariat was restricted to
a small bag of flour with the jerked flesh of two oxen that had been
provided on the occasion from the royal herds. But orders for the
supply of porters, who were not to be hired, had only been issued at the
very last moment, when the purveyor-general, with his customary
liberality, reducing the kingly grant by one half, those finally
furnished--three in number--proved barely sufficient for the carriage of
rocket staves, medical stores, and surgical instruments required for the
state service; the flimsy cotton awnings and scanty baggage of both
officers and escort being reluctantly transported by a few hired
domestics, or lashed with sharp leathern thongs upon the galled backs of
feeble old pack-horses, purchased on emergency at the adjacent market of
Bool Worki.
When contrasted with disciplined forces, the camp equipage of the rabble
Amhara was small and portable indeed. A commissariat is unknown, every
soldier and follower transporting his own provisions, which are limited
to parched grain, or sun-dried flesh; and as, owing to the rapidity of
the march, and the usual absence of opposition, the campaign is rarely
protracted beyond a fortnight, this system has been found to answer.
Governors and leaders alone occupy tents, whilst every component member
of their respective quotas, in defiance of cold and rain, bivouacks upon
the bare ground, with his head upon the shield, and no screen betwixt
himself and the vault of heaven, save the clothes upon his back.
Strange was the sight presented as night closed over the first
encampment of the chivalry of Shoa. Rockets were to be fired by the
royal request to instil terror into the breasts of the Galla hordes; and
we had selected the peak which rose near the head-quarters, as being the
most centrical site for the display. Ascending from below, the hum of
the mighty host arose in the still clear atmosphere, and the gleam of
the bright embers which ran through the depths of the valley, and danced
over the intervening heights, until lost in the far distance, presented
the appearance of a city of ancient days, whereof the great arteries
being alone lit up during the nocturnal hours, full scope was allowed to
the imagination to populate at pleasure the intervening gloom.
The appearance at Angollala of the muskets presented to His Majesty by
the British Government had already caused no inconsiderable
consternation, it being the generally received belief that the bayonet,
hitherto a stranger in the land, formed a great receptacle for poisonous
spells. The roar of each flight of "fire-rainers" now produced a panic
from end to end of the scattered camp. A buzz and a clamour of voices
followed each luminous ascent, to burst forth into a loud peal of wonder
when the brilliant shower of meteors fell after the explosion.
Confusion ensued; horses and mules, breaking from their pickets, scoured
away in terror, pursued by henchman and warrior, their figures, flitting
in dim perspective among the countless bale-fires, like shades called
into existence by some magic agency; and the scene doubtless proved to
the gazing monarch that the political object in contemplation had been
well and fully accomplished.
Habitual suspicion on the part of the despot inducing him to apprehend
desertion to the enemy, the arms of the fusiliers of the body-guard were
piled according to long-established usage, in one of the royal tents,
and strongly guarded. The chiefs and nobles then sate down to a repast
in the pavilion, where hydromel and beer and raw flesh were in regal
profusion. As the horn circulated briskly, and the spirits of the
guests mounted in proportion, it was curious to listen to the vaunts of
coming prowess that arose from the board. No limit was placed upon the
victims who were to be gathered to their fathers, and loyalty and
devotion knew no bounds. "You are the adorners," stammered one, as the
party broke up, who had been decorated by his English friends; "you gave
me scarlet broadcloth, and behold I have reserved the gift for the
present occasion. This garment will bring me signal success; for the
pagan who espies a crimson cloak over the shoulder of the Amhara,
believing him to be a warrior of distinguished valour, takes like an ass
to his heels, and is speared without the slightest danger."
Volume Two, Chapter XXII.